Who Really Wants to Be Alone?

 

Ah, Greta Garbo. She was famous for saying she wanted to be alone.

Some people have crowded, even frantic, social lives. Some jealously guard their privacy to the point of barricading themselves and the places they live. Most of us live somewhere in between, trying to balance social and private lives, and we do it for different reasons. Sometimes it's just for the sake of sanity. Sometimes, we do it so that we can maintain a level of creativity that allows us to exercise the gifts we've been given. Sometimes, we do it so we make sure the members of our families aren't shortchanged in attention. Sometimes, we do it to grow our spirit. 

Greta is known for saying she wanted to be alone but it is less known that she made a distinction. She didn't want to be left alone, she said. She wanted to be let alone, and the difference for her was profound. The problem is that solitude has a partner - loneliness. No matter how much we sometimes crave peace and quiet, too much of it leads to a hollow result, a place where the echoes just get too loud. Sometimes, the solitude is worth the price. Sometimes not. 

It seems that solitude and community are not meant to be exclusive states. Each has a purpose. I don't need companions for everything - indeed, for some things they are counterproductive. But I do need them for some things. I've long held that a church community, for instance, is not the place I commune with God. It is far too loud for that. But it is the place I test and share that communion. 

There's an African proverb that says, "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." As I hear that and think of the Kenyan Maasai - the tribe famous for running across the East African plains - and how they seem to be both alone and together at the same time, self-possessed but always aware they are in company with their fellow travelers.

I like the idea. It seems right to me. Finding the balance which, by the way, changes with times and situations, seems important. Right now, I feel it shifting. Having lived much of my adult life delighting in the company of friends often and well, the balance is shifting toward more quiet, maybe because I'm folding in the feathers of wings I spent a lifetime forging in preparation for final sleep. 

A friend gave me a copy of a book in 1990 to commemorate some plays we had read together with a group of others. It was a particularly sweet time and he included with it a quote by playwright and theologian Charles Williams:

"Much was possible to one in solitude; perhaps the final transmutations and achievements in the zones on the yonder side of the central knowledge were possible only to the spirit in solitude. But some things were possible only to one in companionship, and of these the most important one was balance. No mind was so good that it did not need another mind to counter and equal it, and to save it from conceit and blindness and bigotry and folly...balance - and movement in balance - as an eagle sails up on the wind - this was the truth of life and beauty in life."

Yes. I think Charles might have been right.